Lesson 9
Git Rebase
In this lesson, we will explore the concept of Git rebase, how it can be used to modify and clean up your commit history, and how to resolve conflicts that may arise during the rebasing process.
Objectives
- Understand the purpose of Git rebase
- Learn how to perform a rebase
- Learn how to resolve rebase conflicts
- Understand the benefits of interactive rebasing
Understanding rebasing
Git rebase is a powerful tool that allows you to modify your commit history by moving a series of commits to a new base commit. This can be useful for cleaning up your commit history, integrating changes from another branch, or updating your branch with the latest changes from the main branch.
Performing a rebase
To perform a rebase, use the git rebase
command followed by the target branch. This will move your current branch and its commits to the latest commit of the target branch. During the process, Git will replay your commits one by one and apply them on top of the target branch.
Resolving rebase conflicts
Conflicts may arise during the rebasing process if the same lines of code have been modified in both branches. To resolve these conflicts, you will need to manually edit the conflicting files, mark them as resolved using git add
, and then continue the rebase with git rebase --continue
.
Interactive rebasing
Interactive rebasing allows you to modify your commit history by reordering, editing, squashing, or dropping commits. To start an interactive rebase, use the git rebase -i
command followed by the target commit or branch. This will open an editor where you can specify the actions to perform on each commit.
Exercises
Rebase a branch
- Clone the eriknewland/gitty repository and create a new branch with a few commits
- Then, rebase your branch onto the main branch to integrate the latest changes from the main branch into your branch.
Resolve rebase conflicts
- Intentionally create a conflict between your branch and the main branch in the eriknewland/gitty repository
- Perform a rebase and resolve the conflicts that arise during the process
Interactive rebase
- Using the eriknewland/gitty repository, perform an interactive rebase to modify your commit history
- Try reordering, editing, squashing, and dropping commits to see how each action affects your commit history.